I have always been intrigued why they call it True Detective. I understand True Romance. True Lies. True Confessions. True Grit. True that. But why True Detective? The show’s creator Nic Pizzolatto, “a producer, writer, director and award-winning novelist” according to his IMDb bio, never explained the title of the show nor did streaming service HBO. At least I think they never did and probably for good reason, for if they had, they might have put the spotlight on the show’s celebration of hardboiled detectives and their fear for being utterly irrelevant.
Pizzolatto is no Michael Mann, David Fincher or either of the two Coen brothers, and that’s not his fault. Like any other director infatuated with crime, serial killers and cops on TV or the big screen, Pizzolatto too must find a way to distance himself creatively from seminal films like Heat, Seven or No Country For Old Men. With True Detective Season 1 he tried, but unfortunately only succeeded in the title sequence, which has been emulated ever since. The series itself, however, is something different all together.
When it first came out in 2014 it immediately attracted an audience which was absolutely riveted by the show’s look and feel. These predominantly male viewers loved the slow burning pace and the atmospheric and dark portrayal of two detectives, Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson), who for the duration of the show are sitting in a car talking about their existential angst while hunting a serial killer with a hack for making tiny, straw puppets. Remarkably, fans of the show seemed not at all perturbed by it being void of any substance, in fact, they relished the dialogue between McConaughey and Harrelson as if it was the truest thing they ever heard.
I was still in school when I saw Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish. Like True Detective an unashamedly pubescent study of the male psyche. The only difference being that Rumble Fish was about adolescents and its director had the rare self-deprecating humor to describe his own film as “Camus for kids”. It’s probably unfair to compare Pizzolatto with Coppola, since the latter had already been hailed as a genius for having directed The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation, whereas Pizzolatto only had his IMDb bio going for him.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two productions is the eras in which they were made. Rumble Fish was released in 1983, at a time when men didn’t air their bullshit to the world and US president Ronald Reagan believed he was single-handedly slaying the red dragon, i.e. the Soviet Union. Inequality between men and women was probably much worse than today, but it was also a time when Western popular imagination was more feminine, more vulnerable. Somehow, during the “eighties”, people allowed themselves to be more idiosyncratic, sexually ambivalent and consequently less full of themselves.
True Detective was released on HBO in 2014. Barack Obama was president of the United States and yet for all his eloquence and style, he couldn’t hide the fact that in America, and in many other quarters of the world, male unrest was brooding. Like True Detective, director Tod Phillip’s Joker (2019) epitomizes the male frustration, the self-pity and rage that is so rampant in today’s society. A society in which men are obsessed with finding a singular identity. One that doesn’t celebrate their femininity, but despises it. Both Joker and True Detective tap into this toxic well of self-hatred, masquerading as a genuine desire for male independence, ruggedness and authenticity reminiscent of the past.
Against better judgement I watched all seasons of True Detective. Not once, not a single episode, not a single scene managed to renounce my initial negative assessment of the series. That is, until True Detective Season 4 came along. Created and directed by Issa López and executive produced by the brilliant Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, The Underground Railroad) it tells the story of two female cops (Jodie Foster and Kali Reis) who investigate, what seems to be, mass murder in Alaska. From the outset it is clear that roles have been reversed. Men, not women, have been murdered and female detectives now come to the rescue. The tongue in cheek with which writer and director López puts this reversal on display is anything but subtle. Take the sex for example. Reis fucks her love interest like there is no tomorrow making the poor (big) guy squirm with pain while preventing ejaculation. It’s both larger than life and very human at the same time. Although the ending and the horror elements are clearly over the top, López is excused by the humanism of her writing and directing. It is still, after all, just television.
While watching the series progress on HBO Max week after week, I wondered, what Nic Pizzolatto would have to say about this remarkable change of tone. Pizzolatto is still credited as an executive producer and yet, unsurprisingly, he took to Instagram calling in since-deleted comments Season 4’s ties to True Detective Season 1 “so stupid”. He also told one fan, “I certainly did not have any input on this story or anything else. Can’t blame me.” After Season 4’s finale aired Pizzolatto chose to share negative reactions from other people who slammed the new season as “disrespectful and insulting” and a “hot mess.” He even claimed that López had “butchered” his original writing given the connections between Season 4 and Season 1. When confronted with Pizzolatto’s bizarrely unprofessional dissing of Season 4, director López kept the moral high ground and posted on Instagram: “I believe that every storyteller has a very specific, peculiar and unique relation to the stories they create, and whatever his reactions are, he’s entitled to them. That’s his prerogative.”
Yet, Pizzolatto’s emotional (dare I say hysterical) reaction to the ‘butchering’ of his franchise is more than just a matter of creative differences. His anger is not so much about the loss of creative control, as it is the frustration with a female director who in his mind emasculated his series. Watching Liz Danvers (Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Reis) humiliate the men in Season 4, must have felt for Pizzolatto like rendering Rust Cohle (McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Harrelson) in Season 1 to a state of utter insignificance. Pizzolatto decided to repost fans’ negative comments about Season 4 because their unbridled anger mirrors his own.
“What’s up with all the male characters? They are either soft, weak, indecisive, young, inexperienced, gullible, drunk or devoid of all scrotum”, writes stevelivesey-37183 on IMDb. Dk777 comments: “This is how writers write most of today’s TV shows. The men are stupid and evil, or incompetent and weak, and they don’t even know how to do basic things.” Jamericanbeauty exited the show: “No man is worth respecting. If the writer doesn’t think her male characters are worth respecting or remembering, why should I care?” Syntory is particularly disturbed by the “absurd” sex scene. “Yet another example of trying to make a main character look strong by pairing them with weaker characters.” Douglasmcbroom is convinced True Detective Season 4 “is silly-woke, anti-male, hocus-pocus, jibber jabber” and darren-71073 is fed up. “It’s getting tiresome now, genuinely tiresome. I’m not bothered about female leads, it’s fine. What’s not fine is the endless procession of series and movies where the women are ALWAYS incredible and the men simply exist to make them look good. Every man stands around with his jaw slack, marveling at the stunning competence of the female leads. The women overpower the men in physical battles. The men are evil. Good Lord, can they not change the record? I can accept that SOME women may be able to overpower or mentally best SOME men. But not on every single occasion in every single production. The only way they will learn to strike a realistic balance is if we refuse to watch. Off it goes.”
Reading these user reviews is like watching the ending of the aforementioned movie Joker. The pathetic, loser protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix) ultimately transforms into the avatar of a populist movement that shares the same characteristics as himself: self-pity, entitlement and unbridled frustration. To vent their anger, the losers take to the streets and create mayhem and destruction in Gotham. Fans of True Detective Seasons 1-3 have not yet taken to the streets, or have they? Among the organized groups most involved in the planning and execution of the American Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021 were hypermasculine groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who are convinced their country is in danger of being lost to the forces of socialism, multiculturalism and feminism.
Naturally, taking part in an insurrection and posting a comment on IMDb are two very distinct actions, but fans of True Detective who cannot stomach Season 4 because of female dominance share the same fear of becoming irrelevant. This fear of men is ubiquitous. From world leaders to factory workers, from young to old, men across the globe are frantically clinging to outdated constructs of masculinity. Whether it is schoolboys who express their support for misogynist and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate, or fans on IMDb interpreting True Detective Season 4 as anti-male, or Proud Boys storming the Capitol, each of them reflects wounded male egos.
According to Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan, the undermining of male dominance causes societal and psychological tensions, rooted in the bruising of male honour. De Swaan views the rise of the new far-right, Christian fundamentalism and jihadism as a reaction to women’s emancipation. Once true men understand that a significant portion of male violence – verbal and/or physical – is fueled by outdated notions of masculinity, watching Season 4 of the hit series True Detective, albeit with hardboiled female detectives, offers a much more rewarding experience than perhaps initially expected.